The rain was hammering down.
Everyone ran and squeezed under the covered veranda at the front of the school, or in the marquees, grabbing picnic blankets and chairs, scrambling as they tried not to get drenched.
I lost sight of Al and his family almost straightaway; I couldn’t see an arm’s length in front of me. Big fat raindrops were cascading over me, the rain coming down fast. In moments I was completely soaked.
Jewel grasped my hand and began pulling me along, as the downpour became torrential.
We were running in the rain, and I couldn’t see, and the asphalt underfoot was slippery, so I was convinced we would slip, but still I followed her.
We got to the stairs at the back of D-block. Jewel tried the door and, for some reason, it was unlocked.
She grinned at me—we were shielded by an overhanging roof above, so I could actually see her now—her hair was sopping wet and clumped around her face, her clothes drenched.
We went inside. The hall was eerily quiet and empty, and almost pitch-black. It seemed like a bad, low-budget horror movie: some guy with a nerdy name and a hockey mask was going to kill us slowly and painfully and a lot of tomato-sauce-type blood would go everywhere.
I felt along the wall until I found a doorhandle. I opened the door and felt beside it for a light switch. Jewel bumped into me as I reached the switch and turned it on.
The fluorescent lights flickered three times before they illuminated a classroom. In fact, I think I had Legal Studies in there. Jewel ran inside, found the heater and fumbled with the buttons, trying to turn it on. After a few chilly minutes, it shuddered to life, breathing out a gust of cold air before it warmed up.
She grinned at me again. Her eyes were shining and her teeth were chattering.
With the lights on, I wasn’t as concerned about the undead as I was about getting caught.
‘Do you think we’re allowed in here?’ I asked her.
‘Who cares?’ she said, teeth still chattering. ‘It’s cold. Don’t be such a worrywart.’ She sat down in front of the heater, and I sat beside her. ‘I’m glad I don’t wear make-up,’ she said, wiping water off her face.
The rain slammed down on the roof. It was white noise, consuming everything else.
Jewel peeled off her gloves and my soaked jacket and put them over the heater, then started squeezing water out of her hair. My own hair was plastered to my head.
‘When I lived in the country with my grandparents,’ Jewel said, ‘they would kill for this sort of rain. But here, you know, it’s just kind of inconvenient, especially in the middle of a fete.’
I shrugged. ‘Livened things up.’
She turned and smiled at me, and we looked at each other longer than would be considered comfortable, but neither of us looked away. Her hair was still wet and her dress clung to her tightly.
‘Thank you for saving my life,’ I murmured.
‘The rain isn’t that bad,’ Jewel replied.
‘I wasn’t talking about that. I meant the other day.’
‘I know.’
She didn’t speak for a moment. Then she looked straight at me. ‘Why were you out there?’
I swallowed. ‘I was trying to kill myself.’
‘I didn’t intend to sabotage your plan,’ she said. We spoke quietly. Although the rain was loud, we could still hear one another. I couldn’t hear any other people, though. I could imagine we were the only people left in the world, and the thought was probably a lot nicer than it should have been.
‘I’m glad you did.’
‘Why drowning, though?’ she asked, her voice quiet. ‘Why not pills or hanging or cutting?’
She was right: it wasn’t like we didn’t have the drugs necessary to kill me. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have ropes or razors. Why drowning?
‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
I was surprised she didn’t ask me why I was trying to kill myself, only why I chose the method I did.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘but I think Jeff Buckley drowned. Walked into a river on New Year’s Eve with his guitar, or something. Then again, that’s probably just some romanticised story someone made up about it. Though Jeff Buckley seems the sort of guy who’d want to kill himself in a tragic-romantic way.’
‘Virginia Woolf drowned herself as well,’ I replied. ‘Filled her pockets full of rocks to keep her down.’
‘Was she crazy?’
‘Sort of, I think. I think you would have to be, at least a little bit, to try to kill yourself.’
‘You aren’t crazy.’
I smiled. ‘Thanks. That’s reassuring.’
‘I don’t mean to pry, but shouldn’t you be in a mental facility right now, or seeing a counsellor at the very least? After trying to kill yourself, I’d assume they’d want to help you.’
‘I told them it was an accident,’ I said. ‘It’s better that way. But Dad and True and Al pretty much figured it out anyway.’
She still hadn’t asked me why I did it.
‘Do you think that you chose drowning because that’s what you were already predestined to do, and I was already predestined to be there and save you?’ she asked. ‘God, now I sound crazy.’
I laughed. ‘Maybe. Or maybe I can’t handle the sight of blood, hate pills and can’t tie a knot.’
Jewel laughed and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe we’re talking about this and laughing. Bizarre or what?’
‘It’s an adrenaline reaction,’ I said, ‘like when people get giggly after a serious accident.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I learn stuff hanging around Little Al.’
Jewel stopped trying to tug the water from her hair and went through her satchel. ‘Thank God,’ she said, holding up her sketchbook. ‘It’s dry.’
‘Would you mind if I had a look again?’ I asked.
‘As long as your hands are dry.’ She smiled.
I flicked through the book. ‘When did you start drawing?’
‘Young. Really young. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love it.’
‘My dad’s a painter,’ I said. ‘You think people can’t live off art, but he does. He sells his paintings and he tutors classes and we make ends meet.’
‘That must be why I like him. An artist.’
I closed her sketchbook and handed it back.’
Instead of putting it in her satchel, she got out a grey-lead and started sketching.
‘What are you drawing?’ I asked.
She looked at me intensely. ‘You.’ She drew some more lines, streaks across the page.
I laughed. ‘Don’t!’
She looked at me again, her expression softer this time. ‘Why not?’
I was silent, and she drew some more.
‘Don’t move, all right?’ she said. We both sat cross-legged and she moved to sit opposite me, so I couldn’t see what she was drawing.
The rain continued to pound down outside. Jewel drew. Then she looked at me, eyes flickering over my face, taking everything in. She looked back down at her sketchbook and she drew more. We didn’t talk. I wondered what the others were doing. There was a clock in the room, but I didn’t want to move to look at it.
We could have been sitting there, me being drawn, Jewel drawing, for ten minutes or three days. Time was irrelevant.
She stopped. ‘Okay, this is still pretty rough, but tell me what you think.’ She spun the sketchbook so I could see, and stared intently at me.
‘It looks like me,’ I said. ‘Oh, wow, Jewel. It’s scary good.’
‘You’re just saying that,’ she said. She snapped the sketchbook shut and tucked it away in her satchel. ‘I’ll give it to you later. When I can do another one I can keep.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because you’re beautiful,’ she said simply, like this was a fact.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. Finally, I said, ‘I’ve got no idea what to say to that, Jewel. No one’s said that to me before.’
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes you don’t have to say anything.’
I reached over and touched her hair. ‘Your hair’s still wet.’
She smiled. ‘You know what my mum used to say, when I was really little, if I had wet hair when I went outside? She’d say, “You’ll catch your death.” I always thought that was strange. I imagined getting Death in some sort of net, like a butterfly catcher.’
‘That’s an interesting mental image,’ I murmured.
‘Tell me something about yourself,’ she said. ‘Anything at all.’
‘What if it’s weird or creepy?’ I asked.
‘Especially if it’s weird or creepy,’ she replied.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I wish I was a person who didn’t worry.’
‘That wasn’t weird or creepy.’
‘I know. I’ll try to think of something that is.’
She frowned. ‘I wish I didn’t worry, too. But I don’t think they exist, those people who don’t worry. All the people I thought had it together when I was younger, I realise now are the same as everybody else. They just hid all their doubts and worries and neurotic tendencies better.’
‘People’s neurotic tendencies are the best aspects of their personality.’
She grinned. ‘Oh, definitely. For sure.’
She moved closer, and her fingers crept along the side of my face. Her hand felt a bit clammy, but her fingers were warm.
‘Thanks for letting me tag along today,’ she whispered.
I leant in close and our noses almost touched. ‘Thanks for coming. I think Al’s mum wants to adopt you.’
She smiled. Up this close, I could see the pores in her skin. I could see the faint, faint lines across her forehead.
Up this close, her eyes weren’t just two different colours; they were rainbows. They were bottomless. They sparkled. The deep brown colour of her right eye was flecked with gold, and her left iris was an almost metallic blue.
The rain was thrumming down outside—a steady beat on the roof.
I thought, maybe now, I should tell her I’m sick. I can’t put off telling her forever.
But I was afraid of how she’d react. And I liked how things were, at that moment, right then.
She tilted her head and leant forward just that little bit more and she kissed me.
Her lips were soft, and the kiss was soft, and the world was soft. Her fingers against my cheek were soft. My fingers wove through her hair.
For ten glorious seconds, we kissed.
I leant back abruptly and choked down some air. I pulled my hand away from Jewel’s hair and her eyes flashed with an emotion I didn’t recognise. Confusion? Confusion and something else.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
Then I said, stumbling over my words, ‘Jewel, Jewel. God, I’m sorry. I…I have to go. Now.’
Shaking as I stood up, I grabbed my wet jacket and left, and I didn’t look back once, even though I desperately wanted to.
It was all way too perfect and lovely and she was way too perfect and lovely and I didn’t deserve it and I didn’t deserve her.
Things Sacha would do if he could travel back in time and see himself without tearing the universe apart
Stop his mother from dying
Stop himself from introducing True and Little Al
Stop himself from going to the lake that night and meeting
Jewel Valentine